SMASHfest: The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

SMASHfest: The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

As you read this, you're on a huge, sticky rock called Earth, hurtling round a nuclear fireball at 67,000 miles per hour.

If that fact feels weird and unsettling you're more likely to remember it – the bits of our brains that encode long-term memory are linked to the bits dealing with emotion (and our sense of smell). And this odd memory-creating process affects our sense of the passing of time.

Lots of what we know about space, time and ourselves is surprising and counter-intuitive. But if it's so peculiar, how did we puzzle it out?

Unlike the Doctor in Doctor Who, we can’t feel the turn of the Earth beneath us. We don’t have a TARDIS to take us to other planets for a quick look round. But what does the Doctor do when he lands on an alien world where something strange is happening? He explores, looks for clues and asks awkward questions – sometimes getting in trouble with whoever’s in charge...

Illustrated using clips from the TV show, we'll shows how Doctor Who uses science to inform its unique style of storytelling – and just how close it has often come to predicting future scientific discoveries.